Throughout the autumn, Severus settled into the new routine at Hogwarts. He went to his lessons and did his homework. He got full marks on every essay he wrote, and he got detentions almost every week for 'fighting' with Rosier or Potter- both of whom somehow managed to slip out of trouble for everything.
Lily didn't understand it. "How are you in detention again?" she asked, after Severus had told her he wouldn't be meeting her in the library that evening.
"Potter always starts something." Severus scowled. He didn't want to explain the details. Potter and his cronies had cornered him on his way back from the library, and Severus had used a Body Bind Curse- just as Professor Bampton had been strolling down the hallway.
"Can't you just ignore him?" Lily asked. "He's an idiot, but it's not worth getting in trouble."
"I wish I could just ignore him," Severus said, although it was a lie. What he really wanted was to get Potter on his own and use much worse magic. He knew spells that would wipe the smirk off Potter's face for good.
Lily frowned. "Well, maybe you need to tell one of the teachers about it. Slughorn likes you, and he's your Head of House-"
"No," Severus interrupted.
"Why not?"
"Because I can't. Slughorn loves Potter. And even if he didn't, what's he going to do? Give Potter a stern talking to that he'll just laugh off? You don't understand. You're not- you've never-" He noticed too late that Lily looked upset and realised he had gone too far. His voice had become almost a snarl. "Sorry. It's just- it's fine, I can handle it. I've dealt with worse."
"If you say so," she said, but her tone was colder.
Severus was in a bad mood when he got to his detention. He, along with Potter, Black and Pettigrew, was due to polish trophies in the Trophy Room. It wasn't clear why this was a task that needed to be done by hand, in a castle full of magic, but apparently he did. He cast a murderous glare at the Gryffindors, who glared back. But under Filch's threatening glare, all four of them kept their wands away.
Filch handed them all rags and tins of polish, and then directed Severus to one end of the trophy room and the Gryffindors to the other. Severus stared at the trophies for a moment. Some of them were heavy enough to do real damage if thrown hard enough, and he wondered how quickly Filch would respond if he used magic to hurl one of them at Potter's head.
Severus sighed and took down the first trophy, an elaborate shield calling itself an "Award for Exceptional Performance in Charms", and began to polish. He could hear Filch pacing up and down the room behind him, as though waiting for someone to put a toe out of line and earn another detention.
Severus played Lily's upset face and cold tone on a loop in his head. He thought about whether she had really meant it when she said Potter was an idiot. Because people liked Potter. Severus didn't understand it, but they did.
He reached for the next trophy and put another glob of polish on his rag. This one was a trophy for Gobstones Champion. At least it's not Quidditch, Severus thought. He dipped his rag in the polish again and started down the names. And then one of the names made him stop.
Eileen Prince.
Severus stopped polishing. He stared at the name for a few moments. He knew so little about his mother.
Filch paced up behind him. "Taking a rest, are we?" With a scowl, Severus returned to polishing.
The next day, he delayed starting the long list of homework assignments he'd written down to find a book on Gobstones in the library. The rules were fairly simple, and Severus felt confident he had memorised them within an hour. He made a mental note to convince Lily to try it with him.
Slowly, Autumn became winter. The leaves in the Forbidden Forest turned from green to yellow and then fell, leaving the trees as bare skeletons. The grounds became coated with a thick layer of frost, crunching underfoot as he wrapped a cloak around himself on the way to Herbology. And in December, it turned out that Hogwarts loved Christmas.
Severus had never really had much of a chance to celebrate Christmas in Spinner's End. His parents house had certainly never had a Christmas tree. There had been one in his muggle school, a lopsided plastic one, but that was nothing compared to Hogwarts. The trees were enormous: the ones in the Great Hall stretched from floor to ceiling, a height of at least twenty feet. The teachers and older students took great pride in decorating them: there were twinkling charms, candles transfigured to be non-flammable and vials of potions that glowed in different colours.
And then, finally, his first term at Hogwarts was over. On the first morning of the holidays, he went to breakfast at his usual time. He was in the habit of getting up earlier than most of the rest of the school- it was easier to avoid Rosier that way- but even so, the Great Hall seemed incredibly quiet. A thick layer of snow had fallen overnight, and a feeling of muffled silence hung over the entire castle.
He went to the library as soon as he finished eating. The teachers had left them all with plenty of homework to do over the holidays, but Severus didn't intend to do it just yet. Other students would probably wait until after Christmas Day because they were enjoying time with their families, but Severus intended to use the first week of the holidays on his own research. He had a long list of questions about the recipes they had been preparing in Potions (some of the steps really didn't make sense to him), but first he wanted to comb the archived Daily Prophets for mentions of his family.
He didn't actually know how old Eileen Prince was, he realised. He had to find the publication date of one of her schoolbooks to figure out that she had started at Hogwarts only twenty years previously. Armed with that knowledge, he began to comb through the archived Daily Prophets. The old papers were fascinating. His mother's time at school had not come long after the fall of Gellert Grindelwald and the wizarding world was still reeling from war, trying to reshape itself into something better. St Mungo's began providing treatment for free, thousands of spells were invented, and Hogwarts committed to crack down severely on the bullying of muggleborns (Severus snorted at that). Severus learnt more history that morning than he ever had from Professor Binns.
He took a break to eat lunch, and then came back to research his Potions questions. The library was almost empty- he saw only two other students the entire time he was in the library. It was only as he went to bed that night, still full from a large dinner of lamb chops and mashed potatoes, that he realised how light he felt. He was used to tiptoeing around and avoiding pain- first from his father, and now Potter, Rosier and their respective gangs. But today it had only been him, the stacks of books in the library and a few students and teachers who ignored him completely. It didn't even occur to him to be lonely.
He spent the rest of the week in a similar manner, his mind soaking in knowledge like a sponge. He found his mother's birth announcement, and the fact that she had been Captain of School Gobstones Team. In a book called A Wizard's Genealogy, he found his whole family tree, going back centuries. There was more than one other Severus there, and the tree entwined with names he was familiar with: Rosier, Black, Malfoy. But his mother was absent from the page, and of course so was he.
On Christmas Day, he emerged from the library at lunch to find that the house tables had been set against the walls, replaced by a single long table in the centre of the room. Someone had clearly gone to some effort to decorate it for Christmas: along the middle of the table lay a long garland of pine and holly branches, interwoven with glittering ribbons in the four house colours. Around the table already were several of the teachers and a few other students: the two girls Severus had seen in the library and two others. On realising he might be expected to join them, Severus almost turned and walked right out again- but he had been spotted.
"Merry Christmas!" said Dumbledore. "As it's Christmas, I like to put the house tables away for the day. There's usually so few of us."
"Er… Merry Christmas," Severus managed, approaching the table and taking a seat. He was deeply confused. Dumbledore was supposedly one of the best wizards in the world. Why was he spending Christmas at Hogwarts with a bunch of kids- and kids no-one wanted at that, given they were at Hogwarts today?
Dumbledore had them go around the table and introduce themselves. Severus found himself holding his breath after he gave his name. Snape's not a wizard name. But no-one commented on that today.
"Young Snape here is quite the Potions prodigy," Slughorn said. "You'll want to keep an eye on him, Dumbledore."
"Is that so?" Dumbledore asked. "Slytherin, wasn't it?"
"Yes, sir."
Dumbledore met Severus's eyes with his piercing blue ones, but Severus quickly looked away. The look had been so piercing that Severus imagined that Dumbledore was reading his mind, and made a mental note to check whether that was possible with magic. But then Dumbledore's manner relaxed, and he offered Severus a Christmas cracker. Severus hesitated for a moment- he'd never had a Christmas cracker before. But he copied Dumbledore's grip and pulled. There was a loud crack, revealing a pink hat shaped like a flamingo. "Oh, excellent! I much prefer an interesting hat."
As the headmaster put the bird hat on his head, Severus suddenly wished he had a camera. He was already imagining telling Lily this story, but he wasn't sure she'd believe him.
Once they had all pulled crackers and put on their hats (Severus was relieved to get a lime green bowler hat and not another bird), the food finally appeared. For the first time Severus was glad to be at the crowded table and not hidden in the library, because this was a feast of all the Christmas food Severus had only seen on television. Sage and onion stuffing, cranberry sauce, yorkshire puddings, tiny sausages wrapped in bacon…
Severus began to heap food on his plate, then hesitated. He heard Mulciber's voice in his head. Don't the muggles feed you? He glanced around, gauging whether the amount of food he had taken was out of step with the others around him. But everyone else had taken plenty. Dumbledore had heaped so much food on his plate that Severus wondered if he had cast a silent spell to keep it all in place- it looked as though brussels sprouts were about to roll loose at any moment.
The food was delicious, and for the rest of the meal Severus was able to keep quiet and listen in on the others talking. Some of it was interesting, like when McGonagall told the Ravenclaw girls about her journey to becoming an Animagus. And some of it was less interesting, like a long rambling anecdote that Slughorn told about the people he knew in a Quidditch team.
It was only as he was slipping into the softness of his four poster bed, glad that it wasn't a cold winter's night in Spinner's End, that he realised neither of his parents had sent so much as a card
The rest of the Christmas holidays passed in a flash. Severus fell into a routine wherein every day was the same and he lost track of time- library, food, short walks in the snowy grounds and sleeping in a warm bed. So it was a shock when he emerged from the library for lunch one day to find that the Great Hall was once again packed. He scowled at the sight of Rosier holding court with Mulciber and Wilkes at one end of the Slytherin table, no doubt regaling them with tales of his exotic travels and immense wealth. Severus took a seat as far away from them as he could, propped his book open on a bowl of mashed potatoes and served himself food.
He tried to read as he ate, but his mind kept losing focus. The Great Hall was too loud, the sounds of students talking and laughing echoing off the stone walls. But it wasn't just the noise. Severus hadn't been lonely at all over the holidays. But now, surrounded by the rest of the students coming back to school and slotting back into their groups, he was suddenly very aware that he didn't belong.
Lily's voice interrupted his reverie, and Severus felt a smile jump to his face, his melancholy forgotten. "Want to walk with me? Or are you still eating?"
"I'm done," Severus said hurriedly. He wasn't really, but Rosier's gang had empty plates and if he hung around much longer they were likely to notice him. Besides, he wasn't going to miss an opportunity to talk to Lily.
They left the Great Hall and went out, where strings of twinkling white lights led paths through the gardens. The snow had been swept away from the paths, but it still lay deeply on the dead flowerbeds, almost glowing in the faint light. "So how was your Christmas?" he asked. He could guess the answer already, though- he could sense the lowness of her mood.
Lily sighed. "Tuney's still angry with me. I wish we hadn't read that letter."
Severus bit his tongue to stop himself saying something she wouldn't like. Instead he tried to change the subject again. "And your parents?"
"They were good," Lily said. "It turned out that they were able to order books for me from Diagon Alley, so they got me some wizarding novels!" Her tone turned sad again. "Tuney said they were stupid though." She sighed again. "Never mind that, how are you? How was Christmas at Hogwarts?"
"It was great," Severus said. He told her about the empty castle, his potions research and Dumbledore's hat on Christmas day. The hat made her laugh, and Severus felt a warm glow in his chest. He didn't mention his research into his family- that, he knew, was another entry on the growing list of 'things Lily could never understand'.